James and the Giant Peach (1996)
Henry Selick’s follow-up to The Nightmare Before Christmas, a Roald Dahl adaptation filled with enormous visual creativity as a boy and several talking insects set forth on a sea journey in a giant peach
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
The film that created the modern zombie genre, that took a creature from voodoo and reinvented at a something stumbling and wanting only to devour flesh. George Romero creates a horror film that shoots out all cozy, established convention
The Girl in a Swing (1988)
A cryptic ghost story based on a novel by Watership Down author Richard Adams, featuring Meg Tilly as a newlywed bride who is haunted by events from her past
Project X (1968)
Gimmick master William Castle makes an SF films about scientists engaged in simulations and mental probing to obtain secrets from a man’s mind
Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1974)
One of the most tasteless films ever made, a sado-sexual work set in a Nazi concentration camp with Dyanne Thorne as a sadistic commandant torturing and having sex with prisoners.
Dark Planet (1996)
A routine SF film about an space expedition through a wormhole to investigate a habitable planet where the mission is endangered by warring factions among the crew
The Crow: Salvation (2000)
The third of the Crow films has a more substantial story than the second but is killed by a director who has no feel for the atmosphere created by the other films
Batman (1943)
Batman’s first screen appearance in a fifteen-chapter serial. This is a dull, impoverished adaptation, which sees Batman and Robin rewritten in the service of the US government fighting a Japanese invasion force
Unbreakable (2000)
M. Night Shyamalan’s immediate follow-up to the huge hit of The Sixth Sense. This similarly builds a big conceptual mystery before arriving at the rather hokey notion that Bruce Willis is really a superhero
Hocus Pocus (1993)
A Disney live-action film that engenders no believability in its basic premise. Much of the show is regarded as an opportunity for Bette Midler to steal the limelight and play to over-the-top excess
Hellraiser (1987)
The film that put the name of Clive Barker on the map. A work of considerable imagination where Barker delves into forbidden pleasures and fuses the film with S&M imagery for the memorable creations of the Cenobites
Quills (2000)
Philip Kaufman conducts a biopic of the Marquis de Sade (played by a manic Geoffrey Rush) and how he continued to publish despite being confined to an asylum. This then becomes a debate about modern censorship
102 Dalmatians (2000)
Sequel to the live-action 101 Dalmatians remake. This brings back Glenn Close as Cruella DeVil and proves a far more enjoyable film that its predecessor
Crimson Tide (1995)
Gripping submarine drama from Tony Scott with captain Gene Hackman and second-in-command Denzel Washington fighting over whether to obey orders and fire their nuclear missiles after receiving a possibly faulty alert
The First Deadly Sin (1980)
Dreary police procedural with middle-aged detective Frank Sinatra hunting a serial killer. Mostly, the film seems to be about getting old and the thriller aspect is developed with almost minimal interest
Frankenstein Created Woman (1967)
The fourth of Hammer’s Frankenstein films and the most conceptually wild with Frankenstein conducting soul transplants, including transferring his assistant’s soul into a woman’s body
Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (1972)
A cultish Japanese Women in Prison film made with a wild ferocity as a female prisoner makes an escape and leads a team of women as they take revenge against men who seeks to abuse them
Addams Family Reunion (1998)
The big screen Addams Family films ended with the death of Raul Julia. Subsequently the rights were sold to Saban Entertainment who made this cheap, terrible direct-to-video film with a new cast
The Second Arrival (1998)
Low-budget and fairly indifferently made sequel to David Twohy’s quite good alien invasion film
The Seventh Victim (1943)
One of the classic films from producer Val Lewton concerning a secret society of Satanists. An oppressive atmosphere of gloom and morbidity hangs over the film and, as always with Lewton, it comes with striking directorial effects that play on the imagination
The Neverending Story III (1994)
Abysmal third entry in the series. The creatures lack any conviction and everything is wrecked by taking the story out of Fantasia back to Earth amid hip contemporary jokes
The Phantom Tollbooth (1970)
Chuck Jones, the director of numerous Warner Brothers cartoons, adapts a popular children’s book that comes with a dizzying array of surreal visuals and puns
Twisted Tales (1994)
For a time Kevin J. Lindemuth had a reasonable place making direct-to-video films and anthologies. This is a solidly effective video-released anthology of horror tales
Universal Soldier (1992)
The first studio film from Roland Emmerich, a loud, noisy action featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren as Vietnam Vets resurrected as super-soldiers
The 6th Day (2000)
Arnold Schwarzenegger revisits something of Total Recall in this modest and clever action film in which he discovers that a clone has stolen his life
Frankenstein Conquers the World (1966)
One of the strangest of Japanese monster movies in which the heart of the Frankenstein monster is caught in the Hiroshima atomic blast and grows into a giant boy
House on Haunted Hill (1959)
One of the key films from William Castle, the P.T. Barnum of the horror genre. Castle always approached horror like a carnival barker. Castle does not have much style but the luridness of his shocks proves entertaining
The Vampire (1957)
One of the first films about a medically rationalised vampire concerning a doctor who discovers pills that turn him into a vampire monster
The High Crusade (1994)
Roland Emmerich produced comedy about a group of crusaders abducted by aliens where their bumbling ends up accidentally winning a space war. A promising idea rendered as idiotic knockabout farce.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)
Ron Howard’s live-action adaptation of the Dr Seuss story visually embraces the nonsense absurdism but the charms get buried beneath the lavish production polish. Jim Carrey saves the day as The Grinch however.
Retro Puppetmaster (1999)
This was the seventh of Full Moon’s most popular series, the Puppet Master films. This goes back to tell how young Andre Toulon (Greg Sestero) originally created the puppets
Carnival of Souls (1998)
Carnival of Souls was rediscovered as a cult classic in the 1980s. Then there was this remake that misses all of the haunted mood of the original in favour of makeup effects jumps and reality blurrings that make no sense
Candyman: Day of the Dead (1999)
The second and so far final of the Candyman sequels, a routine entry with Baywatch starlet Donna D’Errico as a descendant of Candyman who is pursued by Tony Todd
The Bogus Witch Project (2000)
An anthology made up of six short film spoofs of The Blair Witch Project with a wraparound featuring the excrutiatingly unfunny Pauly Shore
My Best Friend is a Vampire (1987)
1980s comedy in which teenager Robert Sean Leonard is bitten by a vampire on a one-night stand an has to deal with the complications of turning into one while keeping it a secret at school
Battle in Outer Space (1961)
Godzilla director Ishiro Honda makes a colourfully entertaining space opera about Earth’s battle to fight off an alien invasion force on The Moon
Godzilla’s Revenge (1969)
The tenth Godzilla film and a low point of the series with the focus now going on the slapstick pratfalls of Godzilla’s son. Many special effects scenes are recycled from previous entries.
Destroy All Monsters (1968)
The 20th Toho monster movie where the studio decided to gather Godzilla and all the other monsters under their roof together for a massive tag team brawl. Disappointingly, the monsters are upstaged by space opera elements for long sections
The Prophecy II (1998)
An okay sequel to the angel wars film The Prophecy, the first of several. As in the previous film, a returning Christopher Walken steals the show and gets all the best lines
The Catman of Paris (1946)
A blatant but far more pedestrian copy of Cat People in which a man has blackouts during which he suspects he turns into a catman who is wanted by police for a string of murders
King Kong (1933)
Perhaps the greatest of all monster movies, one that has attained iconic status. A masterpiece of stop-motion animation, it imbues Kong with character and attains a delicate fairytale-like atmosphere
Demolition Man (1993)
One of Sylvester Stallone’s better films, a satirically funny work where he plays a contemporary police officer unfrozen in a future overrun by Political Correctness to chase down criminal Wesley Snipes
Distortions (1987)
Shabbily made psycho-thriller where Piper Laurie tries to scam niece Olivia Hussey out of an insurance payout at the same time as Olivia starts to see visions of her dead husband
The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)
B movie in which John Agar is possessed by a glowing alien brain, this unfortunately fails to live up to either its lurid vigour or its bad movie reputation
The Phantom of the Opera (1998)
Dario Argento takes on The Phantom and welcomely rescues it from musical romance and returns it to being a horror film. Despite a beautifully mounted production, Julian Sands’ Phantom is too weak and wimpy
Little Nicky (2000)
The Adam Sandler comedy and its pitch to the most vulgar common denominator is an acquired taste. This not very funny effort casts Sandler as The Devil’s Son
The Brood (1979)
One of David Cronenberg’s great early films. Fueled by a messy divorce Cronenberg was going through, it is set around a radical psychological institute that encourages people to manifest their repressed angers through their bodies
Rush Week (1989)
Passable entry towards the end of the 80s slasher cycle with a killer stalking a campus during fraternity recruiting week
Konga (1961)
Herman Cohen production with Michael Gough as a mad scientist who creates a giant ape. Aside from Gough’s entertainingly mad performance, this is killed by incredibly tatty effects
Hunk (1987)
A lightweight comedy in which nerd Steve Levitt makes a pact with The Devil to have the perfect male body but soon comes to regret his decision
Deal of the Century (1983)
The great William Friedkin, the director of The Exorcist and other works, had a flop with this unfunny Chevy Chase and Sigourney Weaver comedy about arms dealing and the efforts to obtain a robot plane
The Brides of Dracula (1960)
The second of Hammer’s Dracula films has to work around the absence of Christopher Lee. Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing is brought to the forefront and Terence Fisher provides some standout directorial sequences
Unlawful Entry (1992)
Psycho-thriller where husband and wife Kurt Russell and Madeleine Stowe are terrorised by psycho cop Ray Liotta
Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995)
Sequel to Under Siege in which Steven Seagal was a lone individual in a Die Hard scenario defending a battleship against a terrorist takeover; this is the same but with Seagal defending a train
Dead Again (1991)
Kenneth Branagh breathes life into the creaky reincarnation thriller with a plot that crackles with tension, while he directs with a virtuoso showmanship that shouts style from every frame
Scream 2 (1997)
Wes Craven’s Scream was a clever and witty homage to/deconstruction of the slasher film of the 1980s; for the sequel, he and Kevin Williamson naturally turn to deconstructing the slasher sequel
Scanners II: The New Order (1991)
The first of a series of poorly made sequels to David Cronenberg’s Scanners. Cronenberg’s ideas have been stripped down to no more than a series of head-exploding effects
Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)
Extraordinary directorial debut from Japan’s Shinya Tsukamoto, a frenetic, fetishistic and surreally deranged vision of man-machine fusion that feels like David Lynch having gone away and done a crash reading course of William Gibson
Tightrope (1984)
One of the darkest films Clint Eastwood ever made where he is a detective who becomes tempted by the world of BDSM during his pursuit of a serial killer
Theater of Blood (1973)
Following on from the success of the Dr Phibes films, Vincent Price is cast as a mad Shakespearean actor who employs comically grotesque deaths from Shakespeare’s plays to kill his critics
Remote Control (1988)
A film that comes with a lame premise about aliens distributing a video of a 1950s SF film that turns people into mind-controlled killers all as prelude to an invasion
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958)
1950s bad movie classic with Allison Hayes as a wife made into a giant by a passing UFO who rampages through town after her philandering husband. Painfully bad effects make for show that frequently slides into the laughable
Retroactive (1997)
Modest and halfway reasonable variant on Groundhog Day with a group of people caught in the same loop of time where everything manages to go wrong each time
The Convent (2000)
Early Mike Mendez film that quickly abandons being a standard venture into a haunted convent and launches into an entertainingly over-the-top splatter show filled with zombified nuns
The Ninth Configuration (1979)
The directorial debut of William Peter Blatty, the writer of The Exorcist, a strange and unclassifiable black comedy set in a military asylum. Imagine One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest directed by Robert Altman
O Lucky Man! (1973)
The second of Lindsay Anderson and Malcolm’s McDowell’s social satires with coffee salesman McDowell passing through increasingly more surreal adventures
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Steven Spielberg’s film about alien contact was every bit as big as Star Wars in 1977. The whole film is the equivalent of sitting gazing up at a starry sky wondering if we are alone and built up to the wondrous climactic appearance of the UFOs
Mother’s Day (1980)
A parody of the Backwoods Brutality film. One of the very first films produced by Lloyd Kaufman of Troma fame
The Haunting of Hell House (1999)
An Irish shot adaptation of a Henry James ghost story that was repackaged by Roger Corman to take advantage of the release of the remake of The Haunting
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
The fourth Friday the 13th film, called the final chapter in an effort to kill the series off, only to be such a success this was rescinded in the next film. Joseph Zito directs with more style than usual
Dirty Harry (1971)
The film that made Clint Eastwood’s name. He is a rule-bending cop who decides he has to defy the system in his pursuit of a psycho (a thinly disguised version of the then active Zodiac Killer)
Friday the 13th Part III in 3D (1982)
Third of the Friday the 13th films, shot in the brief fad for 3D films in the early 80s. This is also the one where Jason adopts his trademark hockey mask
Mad Love (1935)
The Hollywood remake of The Hands of Orlac, a classic with Colin Clive as a pianist who believes he is possessed after receiving hands transplanted from a killer. With a fascinatingly demented performance from Peter Lorre
The Adventures of Pinocchio (1996)
This was a live-action version of the popular story given a reasonable budget and where Pinocchio is brought to life with a blend of CGI and animatronics
The Meteor Man (1993)
Robert Townsend directs and stars as the screen’s first Black superhero in this comedy take on the superhero film
Blood Feast (1963)
This has the notoriety of being the very first ever splatter film and served to turn director Herschell Gordon Lewis into a cult figure. Shoddy and unpolished, you have to admit it goes for broke
Possessed (1999)
Early film from Danish director Anders Rønnow-Klarlund. This starts out as a plague outbreak drama and then does a bizarre mid-film twist to become a possession film
Bolt Neck (1999)
The amusing idea of the Frankenstein story relocated to a modern high school – and with no less than later-to-be superstar Ryan Reynolds as the monster
The Wraith (1986)
An unknown Charlie Sheen stars in a film about teens haunted an avenging ghost car. An uncredited copy of Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter
She (1935)
The first sound version of H. Rider Haggard’s lost city adventure about explorers finding an immortal queen (Helen Gahagan). From the producers of the original King Kong
The Little Vampire (2000)
The film version of a popular series of German children’s books about a buy who befriends a young vampire kid. The proves lightweight and likeable enough
Terminus (1987)
Very strange French SF film about a futuristic truck race
I Married a Strange Person (1997)
A quite indescribable animated film from the great Bill Pympton, this largely consists of a series of bizarre and surreal, often outrageous, transformations and juxtapositions
Images (1972)
A fascinatingly enigmatic work from Robert Altman, an artily experimental film in which the identities of five people together at a countryside cottage begin to shift and blur
Dr Who and the Daleks (1965)
This was the first of two Doctor Who movies produced during the height of Dalekmania during the 1960s. Alas a comedy element in the form of the asinine buffoonery of Roy Castle is allowed to dominate and kills the show off
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)
The much lambasted but not entirely uninteresting sequel to The Blair Witch Project. Documentary director Joe Berlinger adds a fascinating layer of meta-fiction that winds in the real-world reaction to the first film
The Blue Bird (1940)
With the success of The Wizard of Oz, 20th Century sought to capture the same by casting Shirley Temple in this appallingly schmaltzy fairytale about two children on a quest for the Blue Bird of Happiness
Big and Hairy (1998)
Kid’s film that comes with a rather slight gimmick in which a Bigfoot is befriended and persuaded to join the high school basketball team
The Wolves of Kromer (1998)
British werewolf film that wittily uses being a werewolf as a metaphor for being gay
Final Mission (1994)
Top Gun meets Virtual Reality in a rather ridiculous plot about Air Force pilots being introduced to a new virtual targeting system that turns them into brainwashed killers
Voodoo Academy (2000)
Completely ridiculous David DeCoteau film about voodoo rites in a boys boarding school that gets hijacked by DeCoteau’s typical homo-erotic predilections
Bedazzled (2000)
US remake of the British comedy where Brendan Fraser is a schmuck who sells his soul to The Devil who twists the wording of each wish. The bite of the original is lacking
Twitches Too (2007)
Having to sit through the Mowray twins airhead natter again in a sequel to their early Disney Channel film feels the equivalent of nails being scratched on a blackboard
Virtual Girl (1998)
One of the numerous Virtual Reality films to come out in the mid-90s, this seems undecided whether it wants to be an SF or an erotic film
The Killer Eye (1998)
A David DeCoteau film about a giant alien eyeball that causes people to become erotically aroused. The chessiness of the premise is hijacked by DeCoteau’s typical homo-erotic predilections
Cleopatra’s Second Husband (1998)
Modestly effective indie psycho-thriller in which a couple develop a twisted psycho-sexual relationship with their unwelcome tenants
Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965)
Very silly AIP comedy that parodies the massively popular James Bond films of the era, as well as features Vincent Price as the villain spoofing his appearances in the studio’s Edgar Allan Poe films
The Mummy’s Tomb (1942)
The third of Universal’s Mummy films where Lon Chaney Jr inherits the role of Kharis
Lost Souls (2000)
Steven Spielberg’s regular cinematographer Janusz Kaminski takes the director’s chair and conducts a modest and effective revival of the 1970s occult/Anti-Christ film
Cyberjack (1995)
An absurd action movie copy of Die Hard where Michael Dudikoff tries to stop terrorist Brion James as he seek to steal an artificially intelligent computer virus